


The Human Experience

by In_Flagrante_Delicto



Series: Six Weeks, Five Stories 2018 [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Concentration Camps, Gay Bucky Barnes, Gen, M/M, Nazis, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, POV Bucky Barnes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-World War II, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 09:09:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13854627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/In_Flagrante_Delicto/pseuds/In_Flagrante_Delicto
Summary: The first of five. Prompt: Love.Bucky’s gay. It takes a war and almost a hundred years to tell Steve. To be fair, he wasn’t trying too hard.





	The Human Experience

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the quote, “Love is a human experience, not a political statement.”
> 
> Prompt: Love.

Bucky’s scared to go to war. No matter how much Steve romanticises it, making it out to be some noble fight for truth, justice, and the American way, Bucky’s not a idiot. He knows war will be,  _is_ , hell. And he’s scared.

If not for how Steve wants to go to war, Bucky might’ve taken his pink slip, gone underground, and lived a life of obscurity. It’s not like he’d be lying, or faking, or anything either. He would just have to go to the recruitment office, say he fucks men, and be done with it. But... Steve.

Steve, who wants to go to war, who is a 4f. Steve.

So Bucky hides the draft letter until it’s almost time. Continues with his life, pretending he never got it. Steve’s been going to art school, and that means Bucky has more free time than he knows what to do with.

More free time to visit family, go for runs, work overtime, or. Go to bars.

 _Gay_ bars. Not that Bucky had never gone to a gay bar before or anything, but it feels different, more real, now the draft letter is a burning constant on his mind. 

When Steve asks what Bucky does when Steve’s not home, Bucky lies through his teeth. He says, “I’ve got a girlfriend,” says he’s seeing someone.

Her name's Jessica, but he calls her Jess. She’s a year younger than him. She’s an accountant at a local law firm, a job with demanding hours. She has green eyes and dark brown hair. She likes strawberries and can’t stand the smell of roses.

She’s also entirely made up, not that Steve knows that. 

* * *

Bucky goes to war.

Everything reminds him of past flings. Every _one_  reminds him that queers are sick and depraved. That there’s something wrong with them.

Bucky smiles. Laughs when he wants to cry.

He makes it through training. See’s a man named Jake that he remembers from a drunken night out. Gets told that, “No-ones gotten that flag in 17 years,” Remembers Brad when he looks at the General.

Survives, day by day.

Gets put on the battlefield. Kills until he’s numb to it. Drinks when he can.

Gets captured. Tortured.

Bucky gets told by men in lab coats that this will improve him. Make him _better_.A superior person. Cure him of all disease. They tell him this as they shove him into a chair. As they hold him down. As he screams.

He gets rescued. By _Steve_ , of all people, and it’s obvious that the super serum didn’t work, because before he thought, “Steve,” he thought, “Wow, this guy is hot,”

Bucky gets put in a special forces unit. The Howling Commandos. Goes on dozens of missions with them. Frees hundreds of Jews and Roma from death camps. Frees hundreds more political prisoners, Jehovah Witnesses, and queers from concentration camps.

He talks to some of the queers, sometimes. When everyone else is asleep. Just... talks.

Must tell at least 300 people he’s gay. Not one of them is in his family, nor the Howling Commandos.

It doesn’t really matter if he tells them. They’re never going to meet again, and they all know the dangers of speaking.

* * *

Then the train. Then the fall.

Then the cold.

Bucky loses control of himself. Can only watch as his body kills and kills. Remembers each face, remembers each freeze. Remembers all the time in the chair.

* * *

The Asset gets woken up. To kill Captain America, he’s told.

It doesn’t work out that way.

“Bucky?”

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

* * *

He gets better. Almost normal again. There’s lots of therapy.

One day, out of the blue, Steve asks, “You ready to start dating again?” 

Bucky blinks, because there’s no way...

“Lots of pretty women in the 21st century,”

Bucky starts cracking up. Steve’s eyebrows come together in confusion. It’s hilarious.

“Steve,” Bucky says, gasping from laughter. “Stevie. It’s the 21st century,” he says, parodying Steve’s words.

Steve nods, still confused.

“I’m going to got out there. I’m going to get a date, and when I do, it sure as hell won’t be with a girl,”

Steve’s face of realisation is amazing, and if Bucky had to say what he went to war for, it would have to be the freedom to love whoever he wants.


End file.
